Morton-based Star Transport faces suit on religious rights

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued a Morton-based trucking company for allegedly violating the religious rights of two former employees.

The five-page suit, filed May 29 in U.S. District Court in Peoria, alleges Star Transport, Inc. fired the two truck drivers, who are Muslim, because they refused to deliver alcohol in 2009. Star Transport, the suit alleges, failed to provide the two men “with a reasonable accommodation and by terminating them because of their religion.”

According to the suit, the men are Mahad Abass Mahamed (formerly known as Mahad Aden) and Abdikarim Hassan Bulshale (formerly known as Abdikarim Ismail).

Andy Kravetz

PEORIA — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued a Morton-based trucking company for allegedly violating the religious rights of two former employees.

The five-page suit, filed May 29 in U.S. District Court in Peoria, alleges Star Transport, Inc. fired the two truck drivers, who are Muslim, because they refused to deliver alcohol in 2009. Star Transport, the suit alleges, failed to provide the two men “with a reasonable accommodation and by terminating them because of their religion.”

According to the suit, the men are Mahad Abass Mahamed (formerly known as Mahad Aden) and Abdikarim Hassan Bulshale (formerly known as Abdikarim Ismail).

The EEOC is seeking back pay and damages for the two men, as well as a court order barring future discrimination.

A call to Star Transport on Wednesday wasn’t returned. The case has been initially assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Byron Cudmore in Springfield. Star Transport has not yet responded to the lawsuit, and there are no scheduled court hearings.

The trucking company could have avoided having the two men deliver alcohol without “any undue hardship, but chose to force the issue despite the employees’ Islamic religion,” said EEOC District Director John P. Rowe in a statement.

Last year, the agency met unsuccessfully with Star Transport to resolve the matter, the suit alleges.

In a statement, John Hendrickson, an EEOC attorney in the agency’s Chicago office, said, “Everyone has a right to observe his or her religious beliefs, and employers don’t get to pick and choose which religions and which religious practices they will accommodate.

“If an employer can reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious practice without an undue hardship, then it must do so. That is a principle which has been memorialized in federal employment law for almost 50 years, and it is why EEOC is in this case,” he said.

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.